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Brian looked interested but surprised.

“Do you really think you’re ready for this, Bee?” he asked, touching my chin so softly I thought my bones might melt and I’d turn into nothing but a pile of Silly Putty in his hands.

I took a deep breath. “Well,” I said. “I’ve been on the pill for a month. I have a whole box of condoms. I also got a patch just for backup.”

He laughed. “So you’ve been planning this for some time?”

“Of course!” I said. “I was thinking that maybe you could wear two condoms, though. Just to make sure.”

Brian smiled, but now he was the one who looked uncomfortable.

“Don’t you want to?” I asked, confused.

“Of course,” he answered immediately. “I just wonder.”

I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. And I was starting to feel dumpy in my red lingerie thing. What did he want me to say? One of the reasons I love math and science is that the answers may be hard to come by, but they’re definite. I felt like Brian was asking me an essay question and only he could decide whether my answer was right or wrong.

“It’s time to take our relationship to the next level,” I said, trying to sound confident but feeling like my voice was getting squeakier by the minute. “You’re nineteen. You’ll be twenty in March.”

I put my hand on his leg and inched it toward his privates. Then in a sexy whisper, I said, “A man like you must have needs.”

His eyebrows shot up and he looked really disappointed, like he’d just turned on CNN and discovered that some warmonger from Bosnia had managed to escape prosecution from the international tribunal.

“You sound like you’re quoting a magazine article, not something you actually feel,” he said. “You’re not ready for this, Bee. You’re beautiful and you’re smart, but you’re just way too young for me.”

“But I want you,” I said, crying. “I want you so bad.”

“I know,” Brian said, pulling me close into a hug. “I know.”

We pulled apart for a second and he said, “You are so beautiful.”

And all I could think was, Obviously not. Obviously I’m not beautiful enough to sleep with.

He stood up, went to his dresser, and pulled out a pair of pajamas.

“Put these on,” he said. “Before I change my mind.”

I went into the bathroom to change, and it seemed like all the pictures of girls in bikinis were mocking me. I wondered if when Brian was brushing his teeth, he heard the chorus of that old Pussycat Dolls song, “Dontcha Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me?” He probably did.

He’d changed into another T-shirt and pajama bottoms. And we looked like two old people in our flannels as we crawled into his bed. We curled together like the letter C, and I couldn’t help but feel how perfectly our bodies fit together. It wasn’t how I’d pictured the night going, but it was so sweet just to be held by him. I slept better that night than I had in a really, really long time.

The next morning, I got up alone. Brian had already showered and was getting dressed.

“Hey there,” I said, not moving any closer because I knew I probably had morning breath.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked.

“Excellent,” I said, with a big grin on my face.

“Good,” he said, tucking his shirt into his pants. He came over to the bed and kissed me on the forehead.

“So, I should probably book my ticket to Chicago for Thanksgiving break,” I said. Brian’s folks live in Chicago, and he’d invited me home for the holidays weeks ago.

“About that, Bee . . .”

“Don’t worry about the money. If I can’t get a cheap ticket, my aunt Zo will give me some miles. She’s got a gazillion.”

“Bee,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I think this is winding down.”

“What?”

“We can still hang out and stuff. But I don’t think we should play meet the parents over Thanksgiving.”

“Oh,” I said, getting dressed faster than I ever had in my entire life. “Okay. Cool.”

“I’ll see you around, okay?” Brian said as he kissed me on the cheek. Then he closed the door on me like I was some random person who’d rung his doorbell by accident.

4

Bee-fuddled

I tried
to wait until I got home to cry, but from the moment that Brian closed the door in my face, I could feel the tears coming and they just wouldn’t stop. I ran home, I mean literally ran, and I know I must’ve looked crazy—I hadn’t even combed my hair, and my face was all red and splotchy and I could hardly breathe.

You know how sometimes you have a scary dream and no matter how hard you try, you can’t get out of it? You think, If I can just wake up, everything will be okay. Well, that’s what it was like the whole day after I left Brian’s house. I was screaming and crying and trying to wake up. But I couldn’t get out of it.

It would’ve been one thing if we had a big fight or if we disagreed about something huge. Like if I was a vegetarian and he kept insisting on eating burgers in front of me. But we didn’t have those kind of problems. We didn’t have any problems at all. It was perfect, and I couldn’t believe he was punishing me like that: for something I did or something I said when all I was trying to do was to make him happy.

I was crying so hard that I got a headache. Then I realized it was three p.m. and I hadn’t had anything to eat all day. I went downstairs to the bodega and nothing looked good, so I just bought a little bit of everything: a bag of sour cream and onion chips, a pack of powdered doughnuts, Snapple mango, some milk, a turkey sub, and a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli. I used to love Chef Boyardee ravioli when I was a kid, and even though I learned about all kinds of fancy Italian food, like risotto, from Brian, I don’t have a thing against pasta from a can.

I analyzed every bit of the evening, everything he said and did, everything I said and did, and tried to figure out when I’d screwed up so badly that he wanted to break up with me. Like when I told him I wanted to have sex with him, I said, “I want you, I want you so bad.” He hugged me and he said, “I know.” But he never said that he wanted me too.

I kept staring at the phone, hoping that Brian would call to apologize, even though I knew that he wouldn’t. There was something so final in his voice when he said that this was “winding down.” It was like on
America’s Next Top Model
when Tyra sends a girl home. She has this really solemn look on her face and she says, “Diedre/ Claire/Barbara/whoever, you are no longer in the running to be America’s Next Top Model. Please pack your things and go home.” Sometimes, the girls cry and beg for a second chance, but the expression on Tyra’s face never changes. On a gazillion cycles of the show, she never, ever changes her mind. That’s the way Brian looked at me, and I knew that it was over.

I called my aunt Zo at home and on her cell, but it took her forever to call me back. When she finally did, I was so flustered I could barely speak.

“Bbbbbbbbrian bbbbrooke uuuup with meeeee,”

I sobbed into the phone. “IIIIII cccccalled yoooou HOURS ago . . .”

Zo said, “I’m sorry, sweetie. I just got your messages. All fifteen of them, pumpkin. But I was at work. You know I have two performances on Saturdays.”

Of course, I knew that. I’d just forgotten. I looked at the clock. It was eleven p.m. She’d just wrapped up the eight p.m. show.

“Do you want to come over and spend the night?” Zo asked.

“It’s too late,” I whined. “Everything’s ruined.”

“How about I take you to brunch tomorrow? I’ll come by and get you about nine.”

“Okay,” I said, hanging up. I’d gone into that catatonic state where everything hurts so bad that all you want to do is sleep. But every time I closed my eyes, even if it was only for two seconds, Brian’s sweet freckled face flashed before me and I could feel myself aching to be with him all over again. It would’ve been one thing if back in September, I’d gone up to him at the Blue Key meeting and he never called and I just saw him at campus blood drives and Amnesty International fund-raisers. But we’d connected. We’d fallen in love. And I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure when he’d fallen out.

The next morning, Aunt Zo picked me up for brunch. Sarabeth’s on the Upper West Side. It’s a fun place, always good for a celebrity sighting. Natalie Portman goes there all the time, and so does Drew Barrymore. We saw Julia Roberts once when she was doing a show on Broadway, and in the summer, when all these movie stars come to do Shakespeare in the Park, you can barely keep your eyes in your head, the place is so full of famous people.

One morning, Zo and I saw this television news anchor who’s known for being oh-so-serious and smart arrive at Sarabeth’s on this big-ass motorcycle, all dressed in leather, with a girl not older than me on his arm. Aunt Zo said, in this really funny anchorperson voice, “Yet another tragic tale of male pattern baldness inciting midlife crisis. Story at eleven.”

What really makes Sarabeth’s so fabulous isn’t the people, it’s the food. All of it is so good, Aunt Zo said we should order like five things so we could taste everything. It’s only when I think back on it do I realize how much I was packing away. (I did mention that Zo is an itty-bitty thing, right?)

Sarabeth’s makes this awesome four-flowers juice. It’s a blend of orange, pineapple, banana, and pomegranate. Aunt Zo had one. I had three. They call their hot porridge “Three Bears Style.” I had a Mama Bear, which came with raisins, cream, and honey. Zo and I split the spinach and goat cheese omelette. Zo had one square of the pumpkin waffles, so I finished them off. I also ate most of the chicken and apple breakfast sausage.

“You know, Bee,” Zo said. “There’s not a single guy who ever broke up with me who didn’t live to regret it.”

I took a break from stuffing my pie hole to let the wonder of that statement sink in.

“Are you serious, Zo?”

“Like a heart attack. Not all of them told me directly, but I heard about it eventually,” Zo said.

I reached for another scone. I couldn’t believe Zo was really going to try to placate me with the old “It’s not you, it’s him” argument.

“Are you hungry, Bee? Or hungry for love?” Zo looked concerned as I asked the waitress for another rasher of bacon.

All that psychobabble? That’s just not Zo.

“Probably both,” I said. “Come on, Zo. Stop talking like Dr. Phil and give me some news I can use.”

She just sighed and said, “Relationships are about timing, and being in college is like learning to play an instrument. For the first few years, your timing is all over the place.”

This was, as she knew, not an empirical truth.

“My mom and dad met in college,” I said. “They’ve been together for twenty-five years.”

Zo shrugged. “There are exceptions to every rule.”

I didn’t say anything, but all I could think was, That’s what I want. I want me and Brian to be the exceptions to this whole flaky college-dating rule.